As can be seen by reference to the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,654,992; 4,528,765; 3,634,963; and 3,378,943 the prior art is replete with myriad and diverse safety devices for automatic firearms which bar the movement or loading of the chamber.
While the prior art constructions are more than adequate for the particular purpose and function for which they were specifically designed, they also suffer from a number of shared deficiencies. In general these prior art constructions are only designed for one particular type of automatic weapon and they are not particularly well suited or even adaptable for use between firearms in the same general class such as shoulder held weapons including rifles and shotguns, nor are the suitable between different classes of firearms such as shoulder held weapons and hand held weapons (e.g. pistols).
Given the fact that every year hundreds if not thousands of Americans are killed by supposedly "unloaded" weapons, there has existed a longstanding need among those individuals concerned with this particular problem for the creation of a simple and inexpensive safety plug device that will not only be effective for weapons in a given class of firearms, but will be equally effective for weapons in different classes of firearms.
Based on the foregoing situation, the primary considerations involved with the development of the present invention were centered around the provision of a solution to the deficiencies that have plagued the prior art constructions; in that they only directed their efforts to provide a solution for a single class of firearms.